Ingredients

Crust

If you make your own, just be sure to do so long enough in advance for it to be really good and ready!

Extra flour or olive oil

A recent revelation has been to cook pizza on oiled parchment. Below is instruction for a more traditional, flour tossed crust, but pressed thin in oil a home baked pizza can have a delicious crunch.

Sauce

Simple crushed tomato, cooked and seasoned tomato sauce, pesto or a white sauce, the possibilities are endless.

Toppings

See notes on the left! But this is an art of balancing bright, strong flavors, with subtle, softer ones, as well as textures that add variety and surprise.

Directions

Preheat oven to HOT. 500 if it will go there. If you have a pizza stone, that’s great, but not absolutely necessary. Because everyone’s oven is a little different, my main recommendation is to have it hot. Baking pizza in a pan will result in a different kind of pie than one baked on a hot stone or steel. All can be really delicious.

1. Generously flour your work surface. You need your crust to be bathed in flour before working with it.

2. Once the dough is on the table and well coated with flour, toss it a couple more times just to be sure there are no sticky or oily spots left.

3. With your finger tips, gently press the dough into a disc. You need the dough to remain free from your hands and the table, so keep it moving and make sure it has no sticky spots.

4. Once the dough is 8-10” across, allow it to rest for a few minutes (at least 5), it will relax during this time and become much easier to stretch to full size.

5. Final stretching can be done a few ways, but I recommend lifting the disc onto the backs of your hands and slowly rotating it, allowing gravity to do most of the stretching work, and focusing any stretching you do on the perimeter of the crust, letting the center naturally thin out on its own. Leaving a thicker edge is totally unnecessary and does not result in better pizza. (Usually just results in the center of the pie being too thin and ripping holes in it.

6. Once you’re happy with the diameter of your pizza, dab it with sauce. You don’t want a pool or puddle of sauce. A thick schmeer is plenty.

7. Once sauce is spread, sprinkle your cheese, then veggies over the sauce, but it’s your pizza, take it the rest of the way however you want.

8. Place your pizza in the very hot oven, and bake it until it has a good amount of color, color is flavor!

ENJOY!

Notes on Toppings

On making really tasty pizza pies at home

(Forgive me in advance, this is just my opinion, and I realize it’s a contentious topic!)

Some pizza toppings are really good applied fresh, but many that are applied fresh, especially when cooking in a home oven, are just way better when cooked first. (Ironically, some that people almost always put on cooked, like sausage, shaved steak, bacon, or other ground meats, are super tasty and better when they go on raw and cook in the high heat of the oven, especially a wood fired one)

The biggest offenders in the “rarely good raw” category are: Button or crimini mushrooms, onions, eggplant, peppers, (green peppers are near the bottom of my culinary list of ingredients in general, so I’m thinking red when I say this) broccoli, zucchini, and most greens. When these go on a pizza raw, I find that unless they’re sliced very very thin, in which case the moisture has a chance to cook and escape, they will just make a pizza sodden and wet. However, when seasoned and roasted, they bring an awesome, flavor filled punch.

Start with lots more raw ingredients to end up with a suitable quantity of cooked! Once roasted, veggies end up being about a third to half the original volume. They’re also way more flavorful.

There are of course many delicious, delicate herbs and greens that are wonderful on a pizza either applied after being baked (arugula, basil, dill) or lightly cooked but still toothsome (broccoli rabe, kale, mizuna)